8022 West 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
www.aocwinebar.com

Thanks to the summer associates at Mofo, Tiffany and I had the opportunity to dine at AOC, a restaurant that had piqued our interest most recently. Labeled as a wine bar specializing in small plates, AOC prominently communicates its possession of a wood burning oven. Wine. Shareable plates of California cuisine from a wood burning oven. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

We simply cannot begin to express our disappointment. The plates were quite small. Imagine hors d’ourves. Three lamb meatballs with feta, raisins, and mint, no larger than a half dollar in diameter, for $14. A grilled chicken, hazelnuts and preserved lemons, when shared amongst four people, is a morsel the size of your pinkie. Other dishes we tried included a salad (good for three to four leaves per diner) comprised of apricots, arugula, manchego and toasted almonds; young broccoli with garlic and chili; morels, ricotta gnocchi and amontillado cream (a necessary filler); prosciutto di parma (quite average in every way); halibut, roasted apricots, yogurt and pistachio (the fish was quite oblivious to its other compatriots); and grilled skirt steak with black olive aioli (quite uninspired).

The gustatory experience was quite lackluster. Don’t let the tantalizing descriptions fool you. The flavors establish no synergies and fail to provoke an experience greater than the sum of the ingredients. I imagine that the entire menu is an ensemble inspired from a range of appetizer menus. Perhaps slightly more abundance would have balanced out the mediocrity of the meal, but alas the restaurant is thus doubly flawed.

The wine menu was expansive. Unfortunately, the selection of flights was small and not priced competitively. The carafes of cabernet and syrah we did order would have had difficulty passing for anything better than table wine.

The single redeeming quality was the bread. Endowed with a crackly crust, chewy texture, and nutty flavor, the bread was well paired with a spicy red spread. The other olive-based spread was quite pedestrian. Fortunately, even a meager wine contains alcohol, and the bread supplemented the slivers of food from our “small” plates. We left our first and last meal at AOC full… of dissatisfaction.